My assertion is that our focus on assault weapons is highly disproportionate to their impact on human life.

Yes but you forget the issue of dying from what is percieved as "chance occurence" and dying because another human takes your life. The other one is clearly worse, psychologically. But then when you awake to the fact that somebody can kill or harm you without actually shooting you, but by manipulating your predicament, it gets even creepier, because you don't know how to defend from that.

I don't quite understand what you're getting at when you say "manipulating your predicament." You seem level-headed, and I'm inclined to care about what you think.

How many would you say have to die in order to matter enough to trouble our legislators? Ten pedestrians? A hundred?

One.

Now you answer my question: how many Sandy Hooks would it take for you to accept that legislation is "proportionate"? You've already said that, when compared to almost 10,000 DUI deaths, 14 Sandy Hooks (around 367 total deaths) are not proportionate (!) and, presumably, a waste of legislators' time.

And here's another question: how much more of this painful fuckwittery are you going to make us endure?

If you must throw legislation around, alcohol is a more efficient target, assuming the goal of saving lives.

Citizen vs. Citizen legislation is a tactic. Get a majority to vote against guns. Get another majority to raise sin taxes, and another to 'throw legislation at alcohol,' etc. Divide and conquer._________________lolgov. 'cause where we're going, you don't have civil liberties.

i'm very offended that any of you would say i shouldn't be allowed to defend myself, and instead, i should have to entrust my own life to racist police departments who hate me simply for the color of my skin. that's what makes you gun control supporters racist.

Well, if you think that's what I was saying then your comprehension skills need some work. And if that's what you think then guns aren't going to save you from what is most likely a persecution complex.

a gun doesn't care about my skin color. it doesn't care whether the person holding it is gay or a woman, or a jewish person. cops on the other hand, are racist sexist pigs. NYPD is currently getting its ass handed to it in court for being so racist. LAPD, baltimore, miami, and every major city has had documented histories of blatant racism. when you say i shouldn't be allowed to defend myself, they have a history of not defending me based on my skin color, and SCOTUS says they have no legal duty to protect me, that makes you a racist.

i'm defending civil rights. i support the rights of everyone. i don't care what race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender you are. no one should ever be denied the human right to protect him or herself.

How many would you say have to die in order to matter enough to trouble our legislators? Ten pedestrians? A hundred?

One.

Then I expect to see you outraged about the general availability of alcohol from here on out. I also expect you to show disdain for those who consume it, as you have shown disdain for me.

mcgruff wrote:

Now you answer my question: how many Sandy Hooks would it take for you to accept that legislation is "proportionate"? You've already said that, when compared to almost 10,000 DUI deaths, 14 Sandy Hooks (around 367 total deaths) are not proportionate (!) and, presumably, a waste of legislators' time.

According to my numbers, we would need to experience about 357 Sandy Hook incidents. I would then view alcohol and assault weapons as equally dangerous.

mcgruff wrote:

And here's another question: how much more of this painful fuckwittery are you going to make us endure?

Then I expect to see you outraged about the general availability of alcohol from here on out. I also expect you to show disdain for those who consume it, as you have shown disdain for me.

You should start a new thread if you want to talk about ORTHOGONAL subjects like drunk driving. It has no bearing on gun control. Like I told you a while back, I'm not obliged to conquer all forms of death and injustice before I'm allowed to talk about death by shooting.

I do disdain this stupid, time-wasting argument. You're trying to blur an issue which is really very clear. It looks like you're deliberately trying to avoid dealing with it.

Following your own tortured logic, there should have been no war on terror; we should instead have waged war on beer.

wswartzendruber wrote:

we would need to experience about 357 Sandy Hook incidents. I would then view alcohol and assault weapons as equally dangerous.

And you call yourself a christian... I'm an atheist but I'm still a better christian than you. Ever heard of compassion?

Ask yourself: what would Jesus do? Threaten to shoot any mofo who came to take away his Bushmaster? I don't think so.

Why yes, the War on Terror has been a pathetic waste. Personally, I think the Taliban should've been bombed into oblivion and that should've been the end of it. But that is not the topic of this thread, is it? For what it's worth, I haven't advocated a war on alcohol, either.

Regarding the rest of your post, you seem to be implying that I want multiple repeats of the Sandy Hook incident, and you're projecting that onto me. Tell me, liar, where have I said this?

My assertion is that our focus on assault weapons is highly disproportionate to their impact on human life.

Yes but you forget the issue of dying from what is percieved as "chance occurence" and dying because another human takes your life. The other one is clearly worse, psychologically. But then when you awake to the fact that somebody can kill or harm you without actually shooting you, but by manipulating your predicament, it gets even creepier, because you don't know how to defend from that.

I don't quite understand what you're getting at when you say "manipulating your predicament." You seem level-headed, and I'm inclined to care about what you think.

Well, politicans are always taking advantage of your senses and options, and try to make you what they want, to some extent or another. And sometimes it's quite dangerous, even deadly. Take war in balkans for example, sons and daughters of those bigheaded fervent "national fathers" who talked about sacrifice for the greater good, were nowhere in the country. They were safely studying law at Harvard or somewhere similar.

Sure you can blame people for being susceptible, like in our case, fucking warfare and "fighting the damn Turks" was in national folklore for centuries, so when media started talking about how it was time to defend fatherland and honor, it activated all the right circuits in their brains, and they wanted to be like those mythical heroes as well.

But when you see at the end-game, you realize what was all about. Turning the independent country into a feudal-like fiefdom of select few, with some very rich people, and a lot of very poor and disgruntled. Not to mention how the "vets" are treated, as usual.

Every war is a big scam, 99% of cases its about economic motives disguised as "freedom fighting", democracy, fatherland, honor, family, or whatever the population hold in high esteem. That other 1% is about silly stuff like fotball.

So my point was that while firearms do pose potential risk, governments are way scarier if you are on the wrong side of equation.

I dunno, it could be that the economic paradigm as we were used to it has come to an end, and government wants to disarm people in time, cos there will be riots and this and that.

You are trying to equate deaths from one cause, shooting, with deaths from another, drunk driving but it just doesn't work like that.

For starters, the total number of casualties does not relate to the effectiveness of policy or the difficulty of carrying it out. There might be some very easy things which have a big impact in one field whereas small gains have to be fought for tooth-and-nail in another.

You've also blundered into a problem of morality. For reasons which ought to be patently obvious, there is a difference between murder and accidental death. Even your own religion demands that you treat them differently. There is a commandment "thou shalt not kill" but it is not a crime against god to cause death by accident (there are degrees of culpability from reckless behaviour but it does not involve a deliberate intent to kill).

You simply can't argue like this. It's nonsense. Presumably you're trying to suggest that gun control advocates are biased but in fact we're not. We're just good, compassionate christians (even though we're not actually all christian) who rate murder very highly in the list of things we'd really rather you didn't.

There is a commandment "thou shalt not kill" but it is not a crime against god to cause death by accident (there are degrees of culpability from reckless behaviour but it does not involve a deliberate intent to kill).

You little miss ego, you wanna win so bad, that you will even throw in religion into the debate, perfectly aware that you are not religious, but kinda shooting at the possibility that he is.

Has it ever occured to you (tho it should be blatantly obvious) that entities that are most hypocritical about just that commandment are governments? They use it in a way of "Thou shall not kill me", but when they do it to someone else its OK because they were terrirsts, or teh ebil axis?

Also, just a technical point here, but the commandment in the original Hebrew says "Murder" not "Kill". Murder is a legal term._________________There is no god but Bach, Beethoven is the messenger of Bach.

i'm defending civil rights. i support the rights of everyone. i don't care what race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender you are. no one should ever be denied the human right to protect him or herself.

Gun possession is not a human right.

And please stop calling me racist, unless you really mean it, in which case stop what I consider to be a personal attack. Thanks.

You little miss ego, you wanna win so bad, that you will even throw in religion into the debate, perfectly aware that you are not religious, but kinda shooting at the possibility that he is.

I know he is a self-professed christian. It's come up before. I also know he's going up against his own religion by attempting to equate accidental deaths with the crime of murder.

I'd call myself a humanist which is really just the same as christianity but with all the mumbo-jumbo stripped out. We kind of like Jesus but we don't believe he can walk on water.

This isn't about ego. It's about some utterly insane laws on gun ownership and the needless deaths that they cause. Sandy Hook was the last straw for many. I never, ever want to have to look at photographs of happy, smiling, murdered children again. As an adult, my responsibility to children is to ensure that their lives are filled with fun and learning, and to keep them safe. It's time we cut through all the 16th century crap about defence against tyranny, and the fear & lies encouraged by an arms industry engaged in the very same corrupt practices against which it brainwashes its victims into believing the gun is their protector. In a civilised society, we do not allow scared, angry, violent men to set the terms of our peaceful lives. We do not allow school shootings to happen, again and again, and then shrug it off as less important than drink driving.

I know he is a self-professed christian. It's come up before. I also know he's going up against his own religion by attempting to equate accidental deaths with the crime of murder.

So? Who are you, thought police? If he is going against his religion, that is his business, you are not arguing objectively, you are simply trying to manipulate him psychologically, because your argument is weak and rests on preconceived notions.

Your whole argument rests on thesis that Obama Administration and government is inherently good. Which has been demonstrated as false, and if you need material of the reasoning, just look up Chomsky. Here is the guy, who is by all standards left-leaning, so you cannot dismiss him on basis of ideological bias. So what are you gonna do, go around with cognitive dissonance and brand him as right-wing nutter?

Also the notion of humanism that you speak of was always an ideal, never a reality. Not saying that it is bad ideal, but you always have problems when you make the quantum leap of treating ideals as reality. It is what it is. You solve the problem by working with what you have, not by requiring conditions that never existed. It's why communism didn't work, it was based upon model that didn't take reality into account.

It's like in high-school physics class, "if we disregard friction and air resistance... then... yadda yadda". It's all fine in the classroom, but it doesn't hold water.

i'm defending civil rights. i support the rights of everyone. i don't care what race, religion, sexual orientation, or gender you are. no one should ever be denied the human right to protect him or herself.

Gun possession is not a human right.

And please stop calling me racist, unless you really mean it, in which case stop what I consider to be a personal attack. Thanks.

self defense is a basic human right. gun possession is a constitutional right that guarantees the basic human right of self defense.

you're the one making personal attacks here. you're attacking all minorities, including myself. the fact is that gun control is undeniably racist and you're supporting it. therefore you are a racist. don't like that? then stop being racist.

you're telling me i can't have guns. you're telling me i shouldn't be allowed to take care of myself. you're telling me i should have to rely on racist cops for my own livelihood. you're supporting a history of racism. stop it. it's offensive.